When Shohei Ohtani stepped onto the sector on the Tokyo Dome in March 2025, he wasn’t simply enjoying a sport – he used to be sporting ahead greater than 100 years of baseball ties between the U.S. and Japan.
That historical past used to be entrance and middle when the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs opened their 2025 common season dealing with off within the Tokyo Sequence on March 18 and 19. The 2 video games featured a number of gamers from Japan, capping a slate of occasions that incorporated 4 exhibition video games towards Jap skilled groups.
It used to be a large monetary luck. Marking MLB’s first go back to Tokyo since 2019, the sequence generated over US$35 million in price tag gross sales and sponsorship earnings and $40 million in products gross sales.
The primary sport of the Tokyo Sequence broke viewership information in Japan.
For MLB, which has observed important viewership expansion this season, it used to be evidence that its funding in Japan and global baseball over the last 3 a long time has been paying off.
Baseball’s early adventure to Japan
Baseball, which is through a ways the preferred recreation in Japan, used to be offered to the country throughout the Meiji Recovery within the past due nineteenth century.
American baseball promoters had been fast to peer the potential for the Jap marketplace, traveling the rustic as early as 1908. Essentially the most well-known such excursion happened in 1934 and featured quite a lot of American League All-Stars, together with Babe Ruth and catcher Moe Berg, who used to be later printed to be a U.S. undercover agent.
That travel had an extended legacy. The U.S. All-Stars confronted a crew known as The Higher Japan Tokyo Baseball Membership, which, a 12 months later, barnstormed in the USA. Once they performed the San Francisco Seals, the Seals’ supervisor, Lefty O’Doul – who later skilled baseball gamers in Japan – prompt a reputation alternate to raised advertise the crew for an American target market.
Commenting that Tokyo is the New York of Japan, O’Doul prompt they tackle one in every of their crew names. And because “Yankee” is a uniquely American time period, The Higher Japan Tokyo Baseball Membership used to be reborn because the Tokyo (Yomiuri) Giants.
When the Giants returned to Japan, the Jap Baseball League used to be shaped, which used to be reorganized into Nippon Skilled Baseball in 1950. The Giants have long past directly to dominate the NPB, successful 22 Japan Sequence and generating Sadaharu Oh, who hit 868 house runs throughout his illustrious profession.
Breaking into MLB
The primary Jap-born MLB participant, Masanori Murakami, debuted for the San Francisco Giants in September 1964. However his arrival wound up sparking a contractual tug-of-war between the NPB and MLB. To forestall long run disputes, the 2 leagues signed an settlement in 1967 that necessarily blocked MLB groups from signing Jap gamers.
Masanori Murakami, the primary primary league participant born in Japan, throws the ceremonial first pitch at a New York Yankees-Tampa Bay Rays sport on July 25, 2025.
New York Yankees/Getty Pictures
Through the Nineties, this settlement was untenable, as some Jap gamers in NPB was annoyed through their loss of negotiating energy. After the Kintetsu Buffaloes refused to offer Hideo Nomo a multiyear contract after the 1994 season, his agent discovered a loophole within the “voluntary retirement clause” that might permit him to signal with an MLB franchise. He signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers in February 1995.
Nomo’s have an effect on used to be immeasurable. His “tornado” windup and early luck made him one of the vital widespread gamers within the primary leagues, which used to be getting better from the cancellation of the International Sequence the former 12 months. In Japan, “Nomo fever” took hang, with huge crowds accumulating tv monitors in public to observe him play, although his video games aired within the morning. Nomo helped pressure Jap sponsorship and tv rights as his first season ended with him successful Nationwide League Rookie of the 12 months.
However inside of a couple of years, disputes over contracts quickly confirmed the will for brand spanking new regulations. This in the long run ended in the established order of posting regulations for NPB gamers having a look to transition to the foremost leagues.
The principles have shifted some since they had been set out in past due 1998, but when a participant broadcasts their aim to depart NPB, then MLB groups have a 45-day window to barter. If the participant from NPB is underneath 25 or has lower than 9 years {of professional} enjoy, they’re topic to the restricted MLB signing pool for global gamers. In a different way, they’re declared a unfastened agent.
A wave of stars
The brand new regulations led many extra Jap gamers to sign up for primary league baseball from Nippon Skilled Baseball: Of the 81 Jap gamers who’ve performed within the majors, all however 4 performed in NPB prior to their debut. Ichiro Suzuki, who was the primary Jap participant inducted into the Nationwide Baseball Corridor of Status, used to be additionally the primary Jap place participant to take the plunge.
Different gamers, like Hideki Matsui, the one Jap participant to be named International Sequence MVP, persisted the luck. After which got here Ohtani, a two-way famous person who each hits and pitches, drawing comparisons to Babe Ruth.
For MLB, Jap gamers haven’t simply boosted efficiency at the box – they’ve expanded its international fan base. The Dodgers introduced in over $120 million in greater earnings in Ohtani’s first 12 months by myself, simply masking his wage even with Ohtani signing the richest contract in baseball historical past. The franchise has additionally observed its worth building up through a minimum of 23% to almost $8 billion. MLB has additionally observed an important building up in viewership over the last two seasons, partly pushed through the rising pastime from Japan.
As American sports activities leagues maintain an an increasing number of distracted, fragmented home target market, it’s no longer unexpected that they’re having a look in another country for expansion. And as MLB groups get ready to court docket some other wave of Jap stars this offseason, it’s transparent that its decades-long funding in Japan is paying off.
